Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources

19. the last bouquet

We awoke on the wane of that first chilly February 26^th day in New Delhi and took turns making vain attempts with the hot water heater to temper the punishment of that icy shower. Over a little table in the guest room, we sorted out our first moves. With us, we had brought copies of our expulsion notices, our written appeal to the Home Ministry along with an attached statement of alternative sponsorship, a letter of endorsement from Piero as Chief Engineer of the Matrimandir attesting to the responsibility and execution of our work, and a letter of introduction to friends who might be able to advise us from Dr. Chamanlal Gupta, a scientist well respected in the field of solar energy who had been teaching in the Ashram School and who was familiar with both of us and our plight.

The rest we would have to play by ear. And it grew more deafening by the day. That evening, after some preliminary phone calls trying to set our directions, we had a quiet and rather charming dinner by candlelight with Ute, the counterpoint to the scenes ahead. The next day, the 27^th, Francis and I met with friends of Chamanlal who listened patiently to our condensed version of the events that had led up to the SAS withdrawal of our guarantees and the consequent expulsion notices from the Government of India. Genuinely touched by our rather desperate dilemma, they advised us to pursue our appeals directly to the Government.

With at least the definition of a starting point for the process, we went by motor-rickshaw for tea at a little outdoor cafe in the middle of Connaught Circus. It was in this cafe, not far from the bushes where I stumbled over my briefcase six years earlier, that Franny and I would later come after each of our subsequent meetings and appointments to reconstruct their contents and conversations on paper which became the transcript of our Delhi experience.

On the 28^th of February 1976, the day of Auroville's eighth birth day, Francis and I wandered into the magnificent neo-Moghul complex of buildings housing the Central Secretariat of the Government of India. It was there that the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministries of Home and Defence were located. We entered the main entrance of the Home Ministry and explained to the receptionist that we had come to make an appeal concerning the extension of our visas. Who should we see? After a few crowded moments in the waiting room and some impatient reminders that we were still there, the receptionist informed us that we could meet R.A.S. Mani, a Deputy Secretary, at 3 PM in his office. At last. The first open door.

We returned just before three that afternoon, picked up our appointment passes, and entered the inner sanctum of India's massive bureaucracy for domestic affairs. We passed through the corridors and up some flights of stairs to reach the office of Mr. Mani. Entering the room, we found ourselves seated before a rather short, prim man, carrying the crisp air of a proper government civil servant. From our transcripts the 25-minute conversation went something like this:

(Brief introductory exchange. He asks us about our work. We show him the notification from his Department, our appeal, and indicate that we have an alternative sponsor.)

Mani: But why did they (SAS) withdraw the guarantee?

(We explained Navajata’s version of Government pressure, that he said we were considered national security risks.)

Mani: On what basis did he have his information?

(We responded jointly that we did not know as he would not tell us.)

Francis: lf there is any truth to this, could you inform us?

Mani: If there was, I supposed he was not free to say. (He looks through our presentation material and reads Piero’s endorsement letter which also clearly questions Nava’s motives for the withdrawal.)

What is at the core of this withdrawal of your guarantee?

(Together, Francis and I briefly recount the history of internal differences that have arisen between resident Aurovilians and the Chairman of the SAS.)

Mani: What is the nature of these differences?

(We briefly explain the nature of the power struggle and the threat it poses to Auroville and its residents. I then provide him with a paper detailing the present situation in Auroville and one indicating the present stage of the legal position. He shows surprise to discover that litigation is in process, and asks why the new Society was formed and what is its relation to SAS, particularly whether the movement is hostile. We replied that it was not, that it was an expression of a deep frustration and an attempt to provide a legitimate legal platform for Auroville to express itself.)

Mani: Are you one of the seven signatories?

(We replied that we were not.)

Mani: Is this just an isolated case or are there others?

(We inform him that others have been threatened.)

Mani : Why weren’t any of the guarantees for the seven withdrawn?

Savitra: Because the motives would be too obvious as they were under litigation.

Francis: We were being used as examples to those not agreeing with the Chairman’s policies...

Savitra: . . . to squash the movement.

(The question of an alternative sponsor then arose.). . .

Mani: Once a guarantee has been given by a sponsor and then withdrawn, the Government is forced to cancel this visa which cannot be transferred to another guarantor without reapplication from abroad.

Savitra: The time factor is acute. Can we not have some interim extension to allow for a thorough consideration of our appeal?

Mani: I must have some time to enquire into the matter.

(He keeps our presentation papers; we reiterate the urgency of the situation; he assures us that the Government is neither callous nor inhuman.)

Francis: When can we see you next to know your position?

Mani: Next Wednesday.

(We depart)

We motor-rickshawed to our little rendezvous in Connaught Circus, nourishing our flicker of hope over ice cream. For a moment, the visa that had magnetized my senses disappeared and I found myself simply in the middle of a park somewheres on a planet whose borders had blurred.

I have no records for March 1^st; I only recall the image of Franny’s ever-present Eno Fruit Salts and his Liv 52 ayurvedic liver pills. The 2^nd shows Francis calling Mr. Mani, who asked to be called back at 4 PM to confirm the Wednesday meeting. At 3:45, I called him back, introduced myself and asked about our visa matters. The following conversation ensued:

Mani: You should leave India as soon as possible.

Savitra: (blown out) For what reasons must we leave?

Mani: It is not necessary for me to explain.

Savitra: What recourse do we have to this decision?

(Mani does not understand what I mean by ‘recourse’.)

Savitra: What advice could you offer us under these circumstances?

Mani: To leave India . . . I can give you an additional week or two.

(At this point, I’m really scrapping to keep the conversation alive, as if our visas were dangling by a telephone wire.)

Savitra: How will the two-week extension be granted – will you convey the information to the local Cuddalore Government?

Mani: Yes, I will do that.

Savitra: So at least we are assured of a two-week extension?

Mani: Yes.

Click.

I didn’t have to explain to Francis. He had heard the whole thing. I heard the cap pop off the liver pills. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I wasn’t a CIA agent and didn’t know it.

The 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th were spent in exhausting days extending late into the night, knocking on all the possible doors of Government available to us. But a mysterious pattern was beginning to emerge, following us wherever we went. Whether it was the Minister who was handling Auroville liaison on up to the then Vice President of India who had been the former Governor of Pondicherry and therefore somewhat familiar with the Ashram and Auroville, in each case we would get a sympathetic first hearing from their private secretaries who offered to enquire into the matter; and then when we would contact them a second time, something had changed in their tone of voice and we were politely told that there was nothing that could be done through their offices. Who or what was getting in between that first and second hearing? We could never find out.

With the circle narrowing and the doors closing one after another on that fragile gossamer of hope, we were put before our last resort in New Delhi. The Ashoka Hotel.

At 9:30 on the morning of March 7^th, Francis and Savitra strolled into the majestic lobby of the Ashoka. After a confirmation at the desk, we proceeded up the elevator to Nava’s room. When we entered, several other SAS dignitaries and devotees were present. Much of what he said to us then was directed for their benefit. It had the air of some Circus Maximus, and went something like this:

Francis: We have spoken with Mani and others and we can get no information. The implications from these conversations and the unofficial advice that we have been given is that if our differences can be settled at home, everything else could be worked out. But that depends on you and you understand this desperateness of our situation. You do, don’t you?

Nava: Are you willing to live in Auroville according to the ideals... And not according to divisive groups?

(He accuses Francis of being Shyamsunder’s man to which Franny responds regarding his dissatisfaction with the CAA.)

Nava: And you, Savitra, with the “Auroville Notes”, not even conferring with the management about what you print...

(I started to make a reply but saw the futility.)

Nava: How can we justify to those looking to Auroville as an example all this sex and drugs? (Francis and I look at each other wondering what Auroville he was talking about.) How does it look to those who contribute (turning to his devotees)? The SAS is paying Rs. 60,000 a month just to maintain Auroville, how to explain that to the contributors? (Francis and I start feeling a bit nauseous.) Will you be willing to collaborate with the ideals?...

Savitra: There is no question of our willingness to collaborate with the ideals. But we don’t want some mental imitation. What can we do now to change the situation between the three of us?

Nava: We’ll talk about this visa matter privately tomorrow, but now let us talk about Auroville. I have heard things recently that have troubled me very much-for a while, I had thought that Shyamsunder and I had come one hundred percent together, but now it seems only seventy per cent.

Francis: ... It seems as if the whole thing is snow-balling and we have to go back to the real issue.

Nava: Shyamsunder came to see me some days ago and said that Frederick was unwilling to dissolve (the Auroville Society). Here in Auroville, we must recognize our proper roles, I have always left full freedom...

Savitra: But Nava, let us try to extricate our matter from the Auroville Society...

Nava: But there is something you can do... you remember that conversation in Pondicherry?... you know what I mean (referring to the bargain of us for the Society’s dissolution). You meditate on it.

Savitra: If I understand you, to be frank, you would like us to use our influence to coerce Fred to dissolve the Society. (Nava nods) But why do you continue to talk to the parties separately? – now to Francis, now to Shyamsunder, now to Fred, now to Counouma – why don’t we all sit together in the full presence of one another and say what we mean? There could even be respected third parties who would be willing to participate...

Nava: We can sit together, but no outsitlL'rs. Let the Ashram Trustees be the ones we sit before.

(silence)

Savitra: So let us not take up any more of your time-there are others waiting to see you. We shall contact you tomorrow as you asked.

Nava: Yes, you call me if something comes up.

(we depart)

Those were not easy meetings to sit through. Particularly when we had just received word from Auroville that Nava was threatening to close down Auroville. If he couldn’t have it, nobody could. Somehow nobody could. Nobody in Particular.

Francis and I were beginning to reach our Delhi limits. Everything was leading to the same dead-end. We were exhausted and we missed Auroville, that kindergarten for secret agents of a new world. The next day Francis Edmund Spaulding and Alan Terry Lithman would meet Keshav dev Poddar, alias Navajata, for the last time.

It was the 8^th of March, almost six in the evening, when we began our fugue. Nava had reached his own conclusions and advised us to leave the country. He said that we should contact him again after three months and that this Auroville Society must be dissolved.

Francis: Is this final – this leaving for three months – is it irrevocable?

Nava: Yes.

Savitra: . . . Be straight. . , is our staying no longer dependent on the dissolution of the Society?

Nava: No, it is passed that. But if you leave and contact us in three months, we will see what we can do. All depends on whether the matter in Auroville clears up or not.

Francis: But as I understand it, once we leave India with a cancelled visa, we cannot re-enter the country.

Nava: You can contact us in three months and we will see from here, depending on how things clear up in Auroville.

Francis: So there is nothing more than can be done?

Nava: Nothing.

Francis: One more thing-I have no money, how will I get back to the States?

Nava: That is no problem, it is our responsibility to take care of the tickets.

Tribhuvan Sugla (an SAS regional head present during the discussion): Once the Government machinery is started, it cannot be stopped. If something had been done earlier. . .

Francis: . . .like three months ago. . .

(Nava leaves)

Sugla: Why not take it as a vacation, a holiday?. . .

(we leave)

We took a taxi back to Ute’s, told her the outcome which she as a trained diplomat had anticipated from the beginning, and brooded over our familiar dinner repertoire. The only thing missing was Wagner.

The following day, our last in Delhi, we made our parting gesture in a personal letter dated March 9, 1976, and addressed it to the Prime Minister of India, which began:

Dear Mrs. Gandhi,

We write you at this moment because it seems, having exhausted all other recourse, you are the last person who can help us. We have diligently appealed through the course of proper channels and procedures –from the local government level up to the Central Home Ministry – only to find a series of polite but closed doors. The matter concerns our most precious yet vulnelable privilege granted by a government: our visas, which have been cancelled. . .

We made one more trip to the Ashoka, this time to the flower shop where we selected a bouquet of roses for Ute. It was the final bouquet in a scene rapidly drawing towards its inescapable conclusions. We left the following day to arrive back in Auroville on March 10^th. We had spent fourteen precious days in Delhi to come back with only a verbal assurance from a Deputy Secretary in the Home Ministry who said that we could have two weeks more from the cancellation date. That gave us till the 18^th of March. Eight more days.

2. long night’s journey into day

We were back in Auroville on borrowed time. It was a unique experience. There was not a moment to lose. Literally. The impending absence made me that much more conscious of its presence. The trees, the hills, the angle of the sun, the strip of sea below, the faces of those too close to recognize, and this warm red earth awakening to a new rhythm. Each detail became distinct, precious, full of a significance beyond its meaning.

Francis and I returned to our work on the top of Matrimandir. We were part of a team preparing the shuttering and emplacement of the curving steel reinforcement rods that preceded each concreted segment of the four-pillared ribs that would soon join in a connecting ring at the summit of the sphere. The working space was a cramped jungle of pipe scaffolding, steel rods, twisted binding wire and sheets of shuttering wood. Above us, above the open space which the ring would encircle, was a platform of planks supporting the crane which would lift the wheel-barrows of concrete that were needed for the continuing concretings which grew in segments one upon the other.

I tried to simply lose myself in the work, to become the size 12 spanner wrench in my hand. But the pain of my co-workers, my co-“loose term Aurovilians” was palpably present. But we went on. There was nothing else to do. There never is.

During that next week I wrestled with a very intimate process of coming to meet my fate. Francis, with whom I had become hyphenated during these last aeonic weeks, had arrived at his own decision. The conclusion for him was inevitable and he no longer chose to resist. He released himself from the compression chamber we were sharing. He would accept his ticket back to the States. What else was there to do?

What else was there to do? I asked myself that question until I became that question. What else? The other option was to stay with the apparent consequences being imprisonment or deportation. But there are moments when one does not consider the consequences. When one acts without conditions. Nothing is fixed until we glue it in the law of our doubts.

I kept looking within, looking within, what to do, what to do? There was no answer. But nothing was telling me to go, I drifted for days in this void with nothing telling me to go. Until the 18^th of March arrived. Oh let me be true, let me be true.

Today, we were supposed to have left India. It was true that as yet we had received no official confirmation, even our tickets had not been finalized and some formality papers cleared. These could maybe buy us a few more days; but technically we were illegal aliens in India, subject to prosecution under the Foreigners, Act. I worked that whole day under the assumption that I had now passed the line. That the decision had been taken by itself. I was still here. In Auroville. In India. Come what may.

As the day began to fade, and the other Aurovilians around me began to descend from the top of the shadow-streaked sphere, I remained on the crane platform above with Piero. The wind was beginning to blow cold when a tiny figure running the distance appeared below. It was Francis, and in a cryptic message, he yelled up to me that “our friends were looking for us.” And then he disappeared. In the distance as the sun eclipsed behind the earth, I heard the rumbling of a motorcycle. It grew louder as the point on the road approached and turned off onto the access to the Matrimandir. Sometimes life exaggerates to the point of melodrama.

Beneath the bulge of the Matrimandir, a police officer dismounted from his motorcycle and asked the straggling Aurovilians around the site where I was. True to their honesty, they pointed up. I asked Piero to go down and get rid of him. He said he would and left my side down the well-worn vertical steel ladder. It was now a fire escape, but I was staying.

I rolled over onto the center of the platform, out of sight from below, pulling some empty cement bags around me. It had suddenly become very cold and grey on the top alone in nothing but my familiar green shorts. I was preparing to spend the night, here on a last point in a myth that was growing true.

I heard the motor start up and wind off into the night. And then everything became silent except for the wind whistling through the pipes.

In that next hour of solitary confinement, it seemed that the decision I was waiting for had been taken … here, thirty meters up on a crane platform.

Then suddenly someone switched on the spotlights and the Matrimandir appeared out of the blackness like some theatre of the Unexpected. Voices below were calling my name but I did not answer. Then I heard Claudine: “Come down,” she said, “it’s all right.” Without speaking, I slipped quietly down the long ladder which descended through the scaffolds of the east pillar.

“Claudine,” I said, “What is it?”

She told me that the policeman had come to deliver a notice to me and Francis indicating that we had been given an extension until March 29^th.

My god, March 29^th, how incredible. The day that Mother and Sri Aurobindo had met in 1914. I asked her where it was and she, told me he had left it in the dining room below Unity office. That last moment kept being pushed back, played out to its full finale.

I walked with Claudine over to the dining room and had one of the most enjoyable dinners I never remembered as I read a notice dated 16 March 1976 and issued by the District Intelligence Bureau, South Arcot, Cuddalore. It was marked “Most Urgent” and growing had a list of memo numbers and cross references at the top. It was addressed jointly to Savitra and Francis and said, after some preliminary sentences reminding us that we should have already left:

“… You have been given an additional time. . .as a special case, to make it convenient for you to leave India on or before 29 March 1976, failing which necessary action will be taken by prosecuting you in the court of law under Foreigners’ Act for contravention of the orders of the Government of India. You will note that no further time will be allowed under any circumstances ...”

In the days that followed, I returned to live in that question which had now been temporarily revalidated. What to do? What needed to be done regardless of the imprisoning circumstances? I needed to know and that need that was consuming me took the form of a letter dated March 20^th which I sent to Satprem, the only one outside myself in that moment that I trusted sufficiently to ask such a question. I conveyed the present situation – we had met with him before our trip to Delhi-explaining the temporary extension which gave us until March 29^th; then got to the point:

… Francis has decided to depart from the limbo of the struggle and return to America. The voices of fellow Aurovilians which earlier were so strong and adamant that we must not leave have now become tempered, tame, more reasonable, and some counsel me to go quickly and painlessly and not cause further complications nor jeopardize my future return to Auroville due to deportation or imprisonment.

It is here that I am alone. The voice of reason – and perhaps it is the voice of Truth? – is quite convincing. It strikes its more awesome note with the threat of permanent or prolonged severance from Auroville if one does not submit to quietly going.

I do not know why but as yet I am not convinced. Do I entertain the notion of staying in the way that one vital ego meets another? Is it simply pride or some deep conceit of playing the hero? Or what?

All the signs around me seem to say “go” – but are they the voices of wisdom or fear?... I wish to do the true thing… I am prepared to transgress reason, but not to follow in the footsteps of the Titan…

The following day I received a reply from Satprem dated the 20^th March which began:

Savitra,

It.is not the rule of the Government of India that you must fight, it is the misrule of Auroville. For that you suffer. And I say your sacrifice plays a part in the downfall of those who misuse their power in Auroville – their days are numbered. That much I know.

So take it as your sacrifice for the freedom of Auroville. And you will come back soon in a free Auroville. If you take this sad happening with the right inner attitude, I am sure that the Divine will use these months of exile to make you stronger and even more useful for the future of Auroville. It is not a wasted time, it is an opportunity for something else which will reveal itself in time. You are not defeated, you carry your part of the battle.

Now may your forced departure make those who remain in Auroville more aware that they cannot let their brothers be kicked out and continue themselves to accept food and money from their blackmailers. Either the Aurovilians are one, or Auroville has no meaning…

The confusion for me was clarified. I was released to follow that unimposing little voice which had first told me, Go with it; fight, but go with. Something more than my visa was being cancelled.

And under the incredible cross-fire of that inflamed moment, seven signatories – two of who were newly co-opted – reluctantly placed their names on a document entitled: “(Circular) Resolution No. 5 Passed by the Council of Trustees of the Auroville Society on 26.3.1976:

“5. Resolved that the suit filed by the SAS against the Auroville Society now pending in the courts, will not be contested any further with effect from 29.3:1976. Further resolved that this resolution cancels and nullifies the previous resolutions No. 2 dated 7.2.76 and No.4 dated 21.2.76.”

The Auroville Society which had been rendered operable by the Courts on February 5^th now made its final resolution, freely surrendering itself. Its principle from the beginning had been self-determination and its fate could not be decided by the laws of men. But the apple had delivered its seeds. Auroville had awakened to its responsibilities, broken from its moorings; and despite our glances behind, the sedate and seductive harbour slipped further and further away. 'Another wind had taken our sails.

On that same morning of the 26^th, I wrote a lengthy note to myself called “Long Night’s Journey Into Day”. It was a call welling from the struggle and the passions that burn in the blood of all men who aspire to be free, not composed from some transcendent, tranquil poise of one who silently sat on the summits alone and detached, but from one here below who shared in a Promethean labour with his fellow humanity. This fire for freedom that has always burned in man from the Vedic hymns to Agni that kindled the primal flame which threaded the ages, awakening the undying spark which passed on through the long nights held aloft by the torches of the sons of that flame.

It was addressed “To the Family”, but I only showed it to Frederick and Shyama, later to Ann. It was directed at that last vulnerability of ours – our secret fears and insecurities and our obsessively misguided notion of “harmony” – through which Nava and others could continue to “touch” us, to play with us, to taint all of our collective actions with an element of hesitation, distrust and division.

“You must be prepared to leave Auroville in order to stay”, it began, “you must-be prepared to give up Auroville to have it… that is the true freedom, the basis by which we may be worthy of being here. ( . . .) We must be prepared to throw ourselves into the fire (. . . ) find the Truth of Auroville in our hearts, the seeds of this new world which no one can touch or take away-we must want that only and nothing less, and/or that we must be ready to leave and by that we are worthy of staying.

“But we still bargain and think of what is best for ourselves: ‘Oh, if I have to leave, what if they pull my visa or my money…’ and we are ready to abandon… this little calling within, the thing we know to be truer; so that we can be safe – or at least maintain our illusion of safety and security – and stay in Auroville. But where is Auroville then? – the true thing that you have sacrificed in order to stay? That is Auroville! – that is what makes Auroville, Auroville.

“But then Reason, our faithful guide, comes forth and says, ‘Harmony’. What is this Harmony? Do we me-an mixture or compromise? Is that what we mean? words are comforting, but let’s not use them as a cover. We don’t need the cover any more. Don’t we see the real faces appearing…? ... Are these the bed-fellows we choose? Is that what we wish to harmonize with?

“‘But to protect the existence of Auroville,’ you say – but it is this thing which threatens the existence of Auroville. This is the true threat....

“Do we want to stay here in submission (…) or are we ready to sacrifice our most cherished attachment for the thing we love?

“Where do we stand? On their land? their property? Must I get their permission to speak to you now from my heart? Find that freedom which liberates us to act according to our highest truth and not according to our lowest fear. Find the place that they cannot touch. Hold to it. Hold to your true value – the thing that makes you and Auroville valuable – invaluable.

“It is the moment to choose – the past or the future? What stuff are we made of? It is the moment to choose? If you choose to stay, as I have, you must also be willing to leave rather than to submit. To stay means to stay according to the Charter – no compromise, no hedging, no self-deceit. You must fight for it. Nothing of value is cheaply bought”.

Most of those passages to myself would later turn to cliché, but in the nakedness of that moment, none of it was.

I awoke before five on that March 29^th of 1976. The unborn day still lay within the womb of night. Tiny constellations of diamonds studded the ebony velvet and a slit of dying moon hung like a golden crescent from the forehead of Shiva. I slipped outside into the stillness. There was no wind, no movement, only the faint AUM of the sea far-off below.

I stood there alone, a speck of consciousness in that fathomless immensity. And slowly the earth rolled in its motionless rhythm and the eastern sky grew pale washed in some magic water colour, and through the sudden breach, an eye of light broke across a scarlet frontier and grew into a golden sun that rose above the rim.

I returned slowly to my room, finished what left-over packing remained, made my last bed, shaved and showered; then walked the hundred yards to the dining room where I sat down to a meal among friends whose eyes avoided mine. I spent most of that remaining Auroville day in Auroson’s Home.

At about two o’clock, I returned to my room, collected my suitcase, and carried it over to the Matrimandir where a car conscientiously provided by SAS would meet us at three to see us safely to the airport. I left the suitcase beside the construction office and began climbing up the vertical ladder to the top.

Francis joined me some moments later and together we paced around the limits of the crane platform. He was at his most outrageous self, having recently shaved off his hair and beard, strolling about the top of the Matrimandir wrapped in a golden shawl. There was something magnificent in Francis’ madness, and in those months to come, my sanctimonious asceticism would acknowledge the genius of his incorrigible divinity.

Patricia, Francois, Gloria, Piero, Divakar… we stood with them in those closing moments as they twisted their binding wire, readjusted the distances of the iron rods. What could we say? What could any of us say?

And then, off in the distances, a small grey, dust-trailed dot disturbed the far left corner of the view, moving along the curving clay road that swung from Auroson’s Home around the arc leading to the Matrimandir. Something lumped in our throats as the grey Ambassador pulled up below.

We descended that inverted fire escape and stumbled through the embraces of the Aurovilians who had gathered there to be with us; I cannot see their faces anymore, for me then, there was only one face. Only after, in the car, I looked at some notes that were given to me and I knew some of their names: Shraddhalu, Minou, Yusuf … Yusuf’s said, “our sadhana now will be to bring you home.” Frederick was there at the car, the last to see us off. We held each other and I knew him then as I have rarely known another man. And then we were gone.

Franny and Sasa were on the road.

I turned over my right shoulder to watch the outline of a sphere and a wide-limbed banyan tree recede into a point of concrete and a point of green until they disappeared behind the veil of trees as we turned onto the trunk road to Madras.

We were off on our “holiday”.

For the next half hour, the time it took us to reach Tindivanam from the point where Auroville connects with the main road, we sat quietly in the back seat, Franny smoking his beedies – small brown-leafed Indian cigarettes – while the gentleman in the front seat next to the driver profusely apologized for the situation we were in and assured us he had no part in it. “Sure”, we consoled him, as Francis blew little pungent-puffed trails his way.'

We approached the crossroads at the centre of Tindivanam where the road to Madras turns right. The traffic was moving exceptionally slowly and when we reached the turn we understood why. Policemen were checking all of the vehicles headed from the direction in which we had come and as we reached their road block, we discovered they were looting for two American nationals who were being expelled – us. The Chairman was taking no chances.

It seems that he had pressed the Superintendent of Police in Cuddalore to issue instructions that we were to get a police escort to the Madras Airport. He wanted to be sure we got on that plane.

Our car was waved across the highway to the Tindivanam Police Station, a quaint little red-brick painted compound that we would become more familiar with in a later chapter. The inspector checked our passports, smiling all the time through his moustache, and then set us down at his table for tea and pleasantries. He also apologized for the inconvenience but said that orders were orders – then proceeded to tell us about some relative of his going to college in the States. We were treated more like celebrities than castaways, but after several grinning minutes, I asked him when we could continue on our way. He sheepishly replied that – uh – they would have to find a car – uh – and get some – uh – petrol. And would we mind waiting a little while longer?

The Indian metaphor of the Keystone Kops.

After what was at least another half an hour of over-sweetened tea and jokes, a small unmarked car pulled up and the Inspector ordered some of his constables to get in it. Then, with all of his rotund grace and good humour, he shook our hands warmly, apologized once again, and wished us a good trip. Sometimes in the most insipid of circumstances, one is struck by the simplicity of the Indian heart.

We got back into our grey Ambassador, slammed the doors, and were once again on our way – this time tailed by a little brown companion stuffed with constables. But the slapstick still wasn’t over. About half way to Madras, the little car overtook us, told us they had some business elsewhere and that they would catch up to us at the airport. And sure enough, blowing what was left of our minds, they pulled off the road in another direction – and it was not until just before we reached Madras Meenambakkam Airport that they reappeared, sure enough, as they said they would, escorting us to the main entrance, where they too offered us their most robust handshakes before turning back towards Tindivanam.

Francis, bald and beedied, and his shaggy-maned counterpart entered the door marked “exit”, headed for the Indian Airlines counter and cleared their tickets for the evening flight to Bombay where they would depart on an Air India jumbo jet called the “Emperor Ashoka” bound for New York. We would arrive later that evening of the 29^th March in Bombay’s Santa Cruz International Airport where Francis would check once more his precious hand baggage stuffed with what he hoped was a three-month supply of Ganesh Beedies to carry him through what he hoped would only be a three-month exile. And we would turn over our American passports along with our expulsion notices to the immigration authorities who unstapled our visa papers and handed us back our passports.

Two hours beyond the midnight of March 29^th, 1976, Franny and Sasa left India as a 747 banked out over the moonless Arabian Sea headed towards another hemisphere where it was still yesterday.

PART THREE:

SUN-WORD RISING

A secret hidden in earth’s core

She did not know the one she bore

Asleep upon an endless shore

She lay unrecognizing.

A sun-seed stirred within her breast

Her earth convulsed, she bore the test

A flame broke through a world possessed

Her need so magnetizing.

That shaft of light the shadows tare

Shot through the dungeoned Dark Lord’s Door

Awoke in her the Child once more

Her Earth a sun-word rising.

21 February 1979